The latest news from today is that the current prime minister, the liberal Guy Verhofstadt, will conduct some information-rounds with two goals: (1) to find out how talks about a state reform can take off, and (2) to find out how some urgent policy-related decisions that need to be made can be made. He is not going to try to form a new government (his party lost at the last elections), but the king gave him the task to try to deblock the current political crisis. Since he seems to be well-respected among the francophone parties too, there may be a glitter of hope – though Verhofstadt too has stated that he believes that another state reform is necessary, and this is going to be difficult to realise, since it is clear for everyone that socio-economically speaking, the Walloon have very little to gain from such a constitutional reform.

Of course they are, unlikely as it is that their correspondent reads much more than the French-language media (although I have to say, Libé is worse in that respect).

I admit that my first impulse was to blame NVA as well, in accordance with the analysis of French-speaking media that Leterme’s ultimatum questions were designed in such a way that French-speaking CDH was almost forced to say ‘no’ so they could be blamed instead of NVA, which had said ‘no’ to a previous agreement (still following?).

But on second thought, the balance is equally on both NVA and CDH: NVA, for saying ‘no’ to the earlier agreement which involved parking the constitutional discussion with a cross-communitarian convention that would have had to produce proposals before the next elections. CDH for saying ‘no’ to even the possibility of talking about anything meaningful in that context.

Quite interesting to see how the two Liberal parties are now brushing up their cross-linguistic credentials, saying they were never divided (which is pretty close to true) and calling on the christian-democrats of CD&V (Leterme) and CDH to find an agreement between themselves first on the constitutional issues. If cross-linguistic posturing becomes the new trend in Belgian politics, something good may have come of this after all.

See Danzig, Free City of (1919-39). Note that this may not be the best of precedents.

Free, and sometimes Hanseatic, cities did rather better in pre-modern Europe. This may also not be the best guid to politics in the 21st century-

On the other hand, most Flemish people I know are relatively strong in favor of a politically united, federal Europe. Belgian politicians always seem to be the first to call eurosceptics ‘traitors’, or similar things.

As a resident of England, I can assure you that whatever ‘prosperity’ exists is largely an illusion. Housing is cramped, in disrepair, and yet costs a fortune. The metro (Tube) and regional train lines are hugely expensive compared to the rest of the world, and crowded and unreliable to boot. The health system relies on poaching third world labor, and even so (or perhaps because so) is inefficient and shabby. Literally hundreds of thousands of native Brits vote with their feet each year, leaving the country for good.

Its a sad day when leaving London for Barcelona, Madrid, or even Seville seems like taking a trip from barbarity to civilization—but it is so.

The first of these is declining, and the others arguably facilitate the emergence and viability of small states by permitting economies of scale to occur above the state level. I’d say that Luxembourg, for instance, has a much better potential for long-term survival and prosperity inside the EU than out of it.

Of course this is still hardly an ideal situation, as if this continues for any time you have effectively moved from a democracy to a bureaucracy of the people that happened to be in place when the last government dissolved, and those civil servants now have no one they are immediately accountable to – while the media would likely catch them doing anything too egregious, they likely can get away with interpreting laws and rules to their own preference more than they can get away with while a politician was overlooking their departments actions.

Would this all look different in a country where the head of state, too, was involved in the political crisis? Does it make a difference that the head of state in a constitutional monarchy is above politics?

We (or at least I) generally think of constitutional monarchs as, at best, roundly irrelevant. And I don’t know anything at all about Albert II (beyond the fact that he doesn’t speak one of his country’s language well). But does this the sort of situation actually constitute an argument for constitutional monarchy? (Before anyone accuses me of being a monarchist, let me emphasize that I’m really playing devil’s advocate here. My impulses are entirely (small-r) republican.)

I don’t see why this is a disaster.

Fear does not stalk the streets; people are not starving in garrets; businesses continue to do business; children go to school; the Euro flourishes.

It may well be true that by now the only long term solution involves the dissolution of that state, but the general lesson is that the role of the ministry and parliament in a modern state is a lot less important than ministers and parliamentarians would like us to believe. What conclusions we should draw from that is, of course, another question.

My distant Flemish relatives seem like nasty customers at times, but that’s politics for you. Maybe they can form a union with the Boers.

I can’t see this as a positive development, but it’s hard to think of a reason why it’s a disaster, except that it will set a precedent for dozens of other splitting movements.